Failure Is An Option: Simon Sinek

Simon Sinek: Failure Is An Option

“We’re all scared,” replied the lieutenant. “Your problem is you still have hope.”

Lt. Robert Speirs was a war hero in World War II. His performance is just one of many stories memorialized in the HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Based on the book of the same name, it tells the true story of the 101st Airborne, Easy Company. Unlike Lt. Speirs, PFC Blithe was not a hero. He spent much of the war crouched in his foxhole crying and rarely firing a shot.

Accept the possibility of failure

But it’s the lesson that Lt. Speirs teaches about the acceptance of failure that is so poignant. Courage is not the absence of fear; courage is feeling afraid and continuing on despite the fear. Great leaders, like war heroes, understand the risks they face and are at peace with the consequences. They are not blind to reality; they just accept it.

The best entrepreneurs are like Lt. Speirs. It’s not that they are not afraid of failure, nor is it that they ignore the possibility of it. Quite the opposite. The best entrepreneurs are the ones who accept the very real possibility of failure and proceed anyway.

It's the same in business as it is in war

Effective leaders inside a big company operate the same way. To operate based on conviction and belief requires an acceptance that your actions could get you fired. This is different from pig-headed bravado, and it is different from putting the company at risk. Lt. Speirs may have acted with audacity, but his actions never put the men of Easy Company in greater danger. He always operated with both his mission the good of the company in mind.

You'll be a more effective leader in crisis

The most effective leaders are actually better at guarding against danger when they acknowledge it that it exists. Cowards, in contrast, cling to the hope that failure will never happen and may be sloppy in the face of danger — not because they don’t acknowledge that it exists, but because they are just too afraid of it to look it in the eye. This is the reason we’re always told to stay calm in an emergency. Panic causes tunnel vision. Calm acceptance of danger allows us to more easily assess the situation and see the options.

If you’re about to undertake any venture that has risk, make sure to acknowledge the risk and to be at peace with the consequences that may come of it.

your survival depends on it

Incidentally, PFC Blithe was shot in the neck by a sniper when he carelessly stuck his neck out of a foxhole in Nazi-occupied France. He died as a result of his wounds three years after the war ended. Lt. Speirs defied the reality he accepted and returned home to America and died in 2007, a decorated officer of the U.S. Army.